


To Feel the Same

by Rizandace



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21524359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace
Summary: “It’ll also be okay if you just give my ass like alittlesqueeze,” Eliot says. Because. Well. He’s Eliot. Quentin laughs, and Eliot laughs, and they vibrate against one another. Things between them are golden.They stay that way for a long time. Quentin buries his head into Eliot’s neck, and they keep sitting there, and they keep hugging. It’s so very, very nice, and Quentin feels floods of tension just seeping out of him and floating away into nothing, soothed and erased by the feel of a body held against his own, the soft pounding of Eliot’s heart, the expanding and contracting of his ribs as he breathes slow.“Q,” Eliot says, very soft, into the skin of his neck. “Do we need to talk about the other night?”
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 29
Kudos: 278





	To Feel the Same

**Author's Note:**

> A brief palette cleanser as I work on my longfic. This has always been one of my favorite Queliot moments although of course it gets overshadowed by the things that come later. I hope you enjoy!

Quentin finds Eliot sitting alone in the armory, surrounded by books.

Something tense and frantic inside of him unclenches, like it always does around this man. It’s actually a remarkable thing, because by all rights Eliot should make him _more_ nervous, not less. Quentin is a nervous person, after all, and Eliot is so… _Eliot_. A High King in his blood. Quentin had meant that, when he said it, and had drank in the gratitude in Eliot’s eyes like a glass of pure, crisp water, essential and quenching.

But Eliot doesn’t really make him nervous, beyond surface-level jitters whenever he thinks about his big hands and long neck and perfect eyes and - well. The point is, on a deeper level, Eliot makes his brain shut up. Eliot makes him calm.

“Hang on to this while I’m gone?” he holds up his crown, watches Eliot’s eyes catch on it and then flicker away.

“Oh. You guys all packed?” God, he sounds so dejected. Quentin hates that, feels it like a bruise directly on his heart.

“Yeah. El… thank you.” What an inadequate thing to say. But what else is there?

“For what?” Eliot says, falsely casual. “For um. Taking one for the team to the tune of the rest of my life?” He sighs, the lightness falling out of his tone as quickly as it had arrived there. Quentin knows he’s too tired to pretend right now, and is grateful. He wants the truth underneath the armor. Relishes in knowing he’s allowed to see it. “I’m trying to see this ruling thing as an adventure,” Eliot continues. “Apparently we have enemies to the North _and_ South, plus broken infrastructure and huge magic issues thanks to the Beast and his wellspring addiction. And do you know they don’t know what champagne is here? I plan on inventing it. I’d like to be known as the Champagne King.”

The truth of Eliot Waugh, of course, is that the wit and charm is _not_ just armor; it’s woven into the fabric of him, as real as anything else. It makes Quentin smile.

“It has a ring to it,” he says.

“Right?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m really looking forward to drinking socially, like the French.” Quentin knows that Eliot means _drinking socially_ as the alternative to _drinking myself into an early grave._ In Eliot-speak, this is meant as reassurance, a promise that he’ll take care of himself. Quentin is up and moving towards Eliot without conscious thought, pulled as he so often is into this man’s orbit. Grateful beyond measure for the coded message.

“So, uh, in the books, time doesn’t exactly run the same speed on Earth as in Fillory,” Eliot says once Quentin is sitting beside him. And this is the real crux of the matter, of course. Quentin’s heart squeezes hard in his chest. He feels like he’s missing Eliot already, even sitting here next to him, close enough to feel the warmth of his body.

“I mean, look, sometimes it got screwy when Jane and Martin would go back and forth.”

“But not always.”

“It’s gonna be fine, El.”

”Yeah,” Eliot says, eyes expressive and scared as he looks at Quentin, like he’s studying his face for confirmation that Quentin somehow knows what he’s talking about. Like Quentin’s reassurance means something to him, even though they’re both aware there’s nothing either of them can do. “Yeah. Or I’ll just live out my days waiting for my friends to return and die alone.”

Quentin can hear it in Eliot’s voice, that _dying alone_ is his greatest fear. Maybe it’s everyone’s. Quentin’s greatest fear, in this moment, is that Eliot is right. That he’ll go back to earth and never see him again. Wouldn’t that be just his luck, to find a friend like Eliot and then lose him to the fantasy land he’d tried to hide himself in his whole life.

“You know,” Eliot says, when Quentin fails to find words to respond to Eliot’s pessimism. “It’s considered extremely disrespectful to touch a king without permission.” Quentin shifts, somewhat surprised to find that he’d been sitting close enough to Eliot that their arms had been touching. It was an automatic thing, being close to Eliot. His body had always felt like a natural part of any environment, something Quentin had a claim to, in a weird yet totally-not-creepy way. He’d ceased to really pay attention to the sensation of touching Eliot, of being touched by him. They’d just - been that way. From the day they first became friends, hands grabbing at arms, arms wrapped around shoulders, even sometimes heads resting in laps, fingers brushing through hair.

“But, um,” Eliot continues, like he’s embarrassed, like he needs something only Quentin can give him. He’s staring straight ahead. “I think you should… probably hug me right now.”

Oh, now _that_ he can do. It’s probably the real reason he sought Eliot out, he realizes, as he turns and wraps his arms around Eliot. Touching Eliot is kind of what he always wants to be doing, because it feels easy. Natural. Uncomplicated, no matter what else is going on around them. Eliot presses his face into Quentin’s shoulder and he holds him back tight, pulling reassurance from Quentin. It’s oddly… _profound_ , in some way, to be able to offer Eliot comfort. It makes him feel useful, which is something he normally struggles to feel.

“It’ll also be okay if you just give my ass like a _little_ squeeze,” Eliot says. Because. Well. He’s Eliot. Quentin laughs, and Eliot laughs, and they vibrate against one another. Things between them are golden.

They stay that way for a long time. Quentin buries his head into Eliot’s neck, and they keep sitting there, and they keep hugging. It’s so very, very nice, and Quentin feels floods of tension just seeping out of him and floating away into nothing, soothed and erased by the feel of a body held against his own, the soft pounding of Eliot’s heart, the expanding and contracting of his ribs as he breathes slow.

“Q,” Eliot says, very soft, into the skin of his neck. “Do we need to talk about the other night?”

It surprises Quentin, that Eliot should say something about this now. He and Margo had worked out their shit, and Eliot had apologized to Alice during their impromptu coronation, but Eliot and Quentin haven't said a word to each other about their ill-fated night together. Talking about it is probably the mature, reasonable thing to do, which is part of why Quentin is so startled to hear Eliot allude to it.

It should probably make him anxious. He’d had sex with this man, had kissed him until his lips had chapped, dug his fingers into the skin of his back, called out for him and gasped his name as he came. And he’d heard the sounds Eliot made when he was in the throes of passion, had felt this man’s teeth clamp into his shoulder, felt him shudder apart in his arms. They’d touched each other a lot after the actual sex was over, hands skimming skin, tender and slow and reassuring, like they had both needed the touch to come down from the precipice of unspeakable sensation. Margo had already been asleep; it had felt like there was nobody else left in the world but the two of them. God, it had been wonderful.

It had also obviously been a mistake, for so many reasons he can’t even properly articulate them all. He should probably feel like shit that it even happened. Eliot had been so fucked up. He and Margo had hardly been better. Nobody in that bed had been sober enough for reasoned consent. And of course he should feel guilty as sin because of Alice, and he _does,_ but all of that feels very remote in this exact moment.

He thinks about Eliot’s question - _do we need to talk about it_ \- and nuzzles his nose into Eliot’s shoulder. “You know what’s weird?” he says, still not pulling away. “I really don’t think we do.”

Eliot lets out a deep breath, his shoulders slumping further into Quentin. “Good. I feel the same.”

And isn’t that a hell of a thing to hear.

Quentin wonders if he’s ever had anyone _feel the same_ as him. About anything. Ever. The remarkable thing is, he really believes it, that he and Eliot are on the same page, that they don’t need the words.

“I don’t know that anyone in my whole life has ever really understood me, until you,” Quentin says. And now he does pull out of the hug, but he doesn’t go far. He and Eliot sit there, looking at each other, and they both know. They know that there’s a thing between them, a thing that’s existed from the beginning. Or hell, maybe it’s a thing they’ve carried between timelines, a spark that reignites when they find one another, no matter how many times they fail and have to start over. The memory of it exists beyond the mind. In flesh, in bone. It’s devotion. It’s soul-deep. It’s not _more_ or _less_ than how he loves Alice, how he loves Jules, or his father, or Fillory. It’s just a different thing. A part of him that’s permanent.

“I know,” is all Eliot says. He leans forward and kisses Quentin very softly on the lips. It lingers, the feel of it, even after Eliot pulls away with a little hum of satisfaction. In bed with Eliot and Margo, everything had been hot and sharp and urgent and Quentin can remember, even through the haze of drunkenness and emotional overload, that it had been the most physically intense sex of his entire fucking life. He remembers that while being with Margo had felt _good,_ being with Eliot had felt _essential._

This moment isn’t like that. It’s a simple, clean thing. More intimate than the remembered feeling of Eliot inside of him, his breath hot and gasping in his ear. They both know it won’t be more than this, ever again. And it’s okay. It’s really, _really_ okay, because having this is everything. Just this one thing in his life that will never hurt him.

“I’ll come back for you,” Quentin promises him, and Eliot rests their temples together, closes his eyes, and smiles.

“I believe you.”

**Author's Note:**

> It’s all about the tenderness, y’all.


End file.
